COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 3 pp 3190—3201
The age pattern of the male-to-female ratio in mortality from COVID-19 mirrors that of cardiovascular disease in the general population
- 1 Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
- 2 Department of Biostatistics, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
- 3 Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
- 4 New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA
- 5 Department of Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
- 6 Center of Human Development and Aging, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ 07103, USA
Received: November 16, 2020 Accepted: January 22, 2021 Published: February 7, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202639How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Nimgaonkar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Males are at a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than females. Older age and cardiovascular disease are also associated with COVID-19 mortality. To better understand how age and sex interact in contributing to COVID-19 mortality, we stratified the male-to-female (sex) ratios in mortality by age group. We then compared the age-stratified sex ratios with those of cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality in the general population. Data were obtained from official government sources in the US and five European countries: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The sex ratio of deaths from COVID-19 exceeded one throughout adult life, increasing up to a peak in midlife, and declining markedly in later life. This pattern was also observed for the sex ratio of deaths from cardiovascular disease, but not cancer, in the general populations of the US and European countries. Therefore, the sex ratios of deaths from COVID-19 and from cardiovascular disease share similar patterns across the adult life course. The underlying mechanisms are poorly understood and warrant further investigation.